GOP House Candidate: ‘I Hate Big-Tent. I Hate Inclusiveness. And I Hate Outreach’

By Eric Kleefeld

December 16, 2009 9:32 am

Allen West, a Republican candidate for the swing seat of the 22nd Congressional District in Florida, is making a bold declaration against the party becoming more open to moderation.

“There are three words I hate to hear used. I hate big-tent. I hate inclusiveness. And I hate outreach,” West told the Weekly Standard, in a new profile piece. “I think you stand on the principles that make you great, which transcend everybody in America, and people will come to it.”

West is a retired Army colonel, who was forced into his retirement after a 2003 incident in which he, as the Standard puts it, “conducted a harsh interrogation” on an Iraqi police officer, in which West fired his gun near the man’s head.